Joloda reaches significant milestone

Published: January 19, 2012

Joloda International is celebrating a significant milestone in 2012 with its 50th anniversary.

The company has grown from a small manufacturer to an international market leader with, it says, more loading systems to offer than any other company in its industry. It manufactures up to 500 pre-sold truck systems per month.

The company was founded in 1962 when Mr Johnstone invented the famous Skate & Track system. Joloda won the prestigious British Design Award in 1977 for this invention. From this, Mr Johnstone went on to develop the hydraulic skates for heavier container loading. Joloda began with customers in the UK, Europe and Japan with a turnover of £1 million. Turnover today is between £7-8 million, with the addition of the US market.

A lot has changed over the years: new expansions every year; MDS Peterborough purchased in 1990; acquired Hydraroll in 2003; established Joloda BV (Netherlands) 2006; Joloda LLC (USA) 2010; as well as a growing network of agents.

Joloda also spent many years manufacturing tail lifts and ammunition handling systems, but these two product lines were replaced with more profitable systems - the automatic loading systems for large blue chip companies. This is a worldwide growing market which was not contemplated 50 years ago.

Joloda's expertise is in logistics and engineering, and over the 50 years it has supplied over 500,000 loading systems working worldwide. The company employs 88 people over two sites in the UK, with assembly factories in the Netherlands and the US.

Joloda has not gone unaffected by the recession over the years, but has survived with a strong export market to Japan, US and Europe and by also offering flexible systems from as little £2,000 up to £200,000.

Joloda has built up over the years an impressive portfolio of customers, from Unilever, Kimberly-Clark, Heinz, Proctor & Gamble, Pepsi-Co, Coca Cola, FedEx, DHL, News International, and many others.

One of the biggest customers is FedEx in US, which uses the airfreight rollerbed system 24/7 for airfreight, with 5,000 systems running daily, coast to coast. The equipment can be supplied anywhere in the world in easy-to-install kits and maintenance is minimum on the systems. There is also a 24 hour spares supply from the UK sites or the worldwide agents network.

Looking ahead, Joloda is positive about the future. It has a strong order book for 2012 and a lot of enquiries for large logistic supply chain projects.